Edmond Nicolas
Austin, Texas
10-March-2026
If I were the President of the Lebanese Republic, I should by now have the certainty
that my Muslim “partner” in the country is no more than a horde of cheaters that have
been recklessly endangering the fate of the Christians ever since independence.
Lebanon is agonizing today because of the conduct of its Muslims. There should be no
disagreement over this fact!
What is required of the “partners” in the nation is to acknowledge that they sinned vis-
à-vis the Christians and straight up apologize to the Maronites. Unfortunately,
apologizing is not one of the ethical values of the Muslim partners in this plundered
country. Therefore, it has become incumbent on the Maronite president to play by the
same rules that our partners have been playing in their destruction of the country,
namely to preemptively split the national army whose fissure everyone fears. Just as
the Lebanese Sunnis did when the Palestinian refugee Yasser Arafat waged his war on
the Christians in 1975: The Sunnis broke apart the army and created the Arab Army of
Lebanon under the command of a seditious lieutenant Ahmed Khatib.
The Arab Army of Lebanon assembled officers and soldiers who rebelled against the
legitimate authorities of the Lebanese republic in support of Arab actors who had
colluded to wage an existential war against the Christians under the pretext of
combating “Political Maronitism”. The then-Commander of the army, Ibrahim Tannous,
regrouped the remaining loyalist brigades of the national army during the term of
president Amin Gemayel. But in 1984, the Shiite Muslim leader of the Amal gang, one
Nabih Berri, confiscated the “Shiite” Sixth Brigade of the army all to himself, as he
mounted a mutiny against the State and the Republic, driving the Maronites’ back
against the wall as they fought for their survival.
In discussing military strategy and the positioning of the protagonists when survival is
at stake, one needs to see Berri’s seditious conduct in 1985 as nothing more than
advancing the Shiites as a new player in the Arab Muslim war against the Maronites of
Lebanon. Berri paved the way for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to infiltrate the
Lebanese Army under the pretext of establishing sectarian quotas, something that
would become the norm after the 1989 Taif Agreement. Berri knew that his treason
against the Lebanese Republic would be a setback for the Christians, that it would
score a victory for his Shiites against the Maronites, which essentially meant that the Shiites stole the victory and the spotlight from under the feet of the Sunnis who,
together with the Arabs, had fought Arafat’s Palestinian war against the Lebanese
Christians in 1975.
Once he became Speaker of Parliament, Berri began using his Amal thugs to dismantle
the Lebanese State under the guise of combating “Political Maronitism”. Berri knew
that the Maronites could not make up for their loss through the Taif constitution. He
exploited the Maronite retreat and worked on altering the outcome of the war. Thus,
instead of the Arab Sunnis being the victors against the Christians, it was Iran and the
Shiites who reaped the victory and Berri’s own prize was to be Speaker for life. The
defeat of the Maronites became a victory for the Shiites instead of one for the Sunni
Arabs.
Back to our initial proposition: what utility is there for the president to stage a coup
against the failed State and split the army? The splitting of the army could very well be
a pacific one without bloodletting. It could even be done through a constitutional
process. Being the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the President’s Order of
the Day could literally be: “I task the Lebanese Army with seizing Hezbollah’s weapons
and the weapons of all the other terrorist Islamic organizations on Lebanese soil, and I
command soldiers and officers to abide by this order”. However, the army command
could give soldiers and officers the choice between participating in the execution of
the order and recusing themselves by staying in their barracks until the completion of
the mission. As president, he would then know who is with him and who is against him,
and he would no longer fear a mutiny since he would have preemptively acted it.
Lebanon has fallen from its Maronite heady day during the independence republic
down to the Arab and Muslim cesspool it finds itself in nowadays. The Muslims of
Lebanon should reckon with the fact that Political Maronitism did in fact make
Lebanon one of the best economies and one of the most prosperous countries in the
world. But right now, the Muslims have taken Lebanon to the edge of the abyss,
indeed to a point of no return, after the Maronite surrender in the Taif agreement. The
country has been through the corruption era of Rafik Hariri and his Political Sunnism,
after which Lebanon endured and further deteriorated through the era of the Shiite
bully Nabih Berri as it coercively joined the “International Terrorism” club under the
leadership of the traitor criminal Hassan Nasrallah.
Is this narrative sectarian and fanatic? No, no, no. It merely laid down the bitter reality
on the table.
Edmond Nicolas
Author and publisher,
[Translated from Arabic: [ https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18Ei7e2X6f/ ]
